Hydraulic parts, essential to modern equipment manufacturing, are mostly used in mobile machinery, industrial machinery and large-sized equipment. Especially, construction machinery consumes the overwhelming 40% hydraulic parts. Since 2017, China’s construction machinery industry has recovered, and the market has regained rapid growth thanks to the accelerated renewal of second-hand equipment, the positive effects of air pollution prevention and environmental protection policies on the market, the export growth stimulated by the “Belt and Road” Initiative, and the popularization and application of new technologies and methods in the field of construction. According to the statistics from China Construction Machinery Association, the entire industry achieved the revenue of RMB668.1 billion in 2019, an increase of 12% over 2018, after deducting incomparable factors, duplicate data and non-construction machinery revenue.

The growth of the construction machinery industry has triggered higher demand for the hydraulic industry. In 2019, the global hydraulic market size was estimated at approximately EUR30.2 billion, marking a relatively mature stage with stable growth. Affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the global hydraulic market size is expected to decline to roughly EUR27.5 billion in 2020. However, the market size will recover o EUR32.3 billion by 2026 after the pandemic ends.

China’s hydraulic industry started in the 1950s. After decades of efforts, the overall technical level has been greatly improved, which offers strong support the stable development of the hydraulic industry. In order to mitigate the impact of the global financial crisis on the domestic economy, China has further bolstered infrastructure construction. The total output value of the hydraulic industry jumped from RMB26.9 billion in 2009 to RMB48.8 billion in 2014, with the CAGR of 12.65%. Since then, the industry has maintained a certain growth rate stably. The total output value of China’s hydraulic industry was about RMB55.4 billion in 2017, and is expected to reach RMB60.1 billion in 2019.

As China emphasized “hosts over components” in the industrial development in the past, the development of China ’s hydraulic component industry lags behind that of hosts. The R&D and innovation capabilities of the hydraulic component industry cannot meet the higher and higher requirements proposed by hosts, and the structural surplus of low-end products and the structural shortage of high-end products coexist. On the one hand, domestic companies have overcapacity in medium and low-end products and pose severe homogeneity competition; on the other hand, low R&D and production levels of high-end products, especially high-end control components, cause a failure in the formation of effective supply. The global high-end hydraulic market is almost monopolized by a few hydraulic players such as Bosch Rexroth, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, etc., so that China depends on the import of medium and high-end hydraulic components in the long term. From the perspective of import and export data, the export of China’s hydraulic industry has grown rapidly in the past ten years, but it has not yet shaken off the long-term dependence on imports.

From the perspective of market competition, the United States, Japan and Germany, as manufacturing powerhouses, have nurtured the most competitive precision hydraulic manufacturing giants in the world. The high technical barriers to the hydraulic industry have resulted in a high degree of concentration. With the expansion of the downstream application market, a number of tycoons have emerged, such as Bosch-Rexroth, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Parker Hannifin, Eaton (acquired by Danfoss), etc. which master the most advanced hydraulic manufacturing technology in the world.

Due to the short development history and low concentration of China’s hydraulic industry, most local companies are small in scale without independent innovation capabilities. Especially, the development of high-end hydraulic parts is seriously lagging behind the downstream equipment manufacturing industry. For a long time, China has heavily relied on imported high-end hydraulic parts, which poses a bottleneck restricting the development of China’s equipment manufacturing industry. In recent years, the emergence of several domestic hydraulic component companies, such as Jiangsu Hengli Hydraulic Co., Ltd and Yantai Eddie Precision Machinery Co., Ltd., has gradually changed the situation, and these companies have constantly improved competitiveness to get rid of the bottleneck gradually.

Global and China Hydraulic Industry Report, 2020-2026 by ResearchInChina highlights the following:
Hydraulic industry (definition and classification, industrial chain, technology trend. etc.);
Global and Chinese hydraulic industry (market size and prediction, competition pattern, major subdivision market, import and export, etc.);
Chinese construction machinery industry scale, competition pattern, etc.;
7 global and 20 Chinese hydraulic enterprises (profile, business, operation and new products, etc.).